Jailed militant threatens "war" after Turkish vote
Fri, 6 May 2011 16:03 GMT
* Kurdish militant chief wants talks to end conflict
* PM Erdogan revealed contacts with PKK leader Ocalan
* PKK says its fighters ambushed police after Erdogan rally
* Police raids in Ankara, up to eight suspects held
ANKARA, May 6 (Reuters) - A jailed Kurdish militant leader threatened "war" unless the Turkish government enters talks to end a long-running ethnic conflict after a national election on June 12, a pro-Kurdish news agency reported on Friday.
Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), sent the warning through lawyers from his prison cell on Imrali island south of Istanbul, Firat news agency said.
The PKK also issued a statement saying its fighters had carried out an ambush on Wednesday that killed one police officer and wounded another in northern Turkey after an election rally by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.
Erdogan's AK Party is expected to win a third consecutive term of single-party rule when Turks vote next month.
But the conflict in the mainly Kurdish southeast remains an open wound in Turkey, with more than 40,000 people killed since the PKK took up arms against the state in 1984.
Last month, while visiting Strasbourg, Erdogan revealed that the state was holding talks with Ocalan, who was caught in 1999.
The PKK ended a six-month ceasefire in February and there have been fears of rising violence before the election. Ocalan spelt out the consequences if the talks failed to move to higher level days after the vote.
"Either a meaningful negotiation process begins after June 15, or a big war breaks out, and all hell will break loose," Ocalan said in his statement.
He said agreements reached with the state's representatives had been broken, and the security forces were launching major operations and arresting many people.
"We had agreed with the delegation that there would be no killings, no arrests," Ocalan said. "Neither killings, nor operations, nor arrests, or stone-throwing. But they did not follow the agreement."
Speaking to reporters after visiting the wounded officer on Friday, Erdogan said the militants were targeting his party.
"The attitude of the separatist organization towards our party is apparent. They attack our party offices with Molotov cocktails all around the country," he said.
On Wednesday, PKK gunmen ambushed a police car escorting a ruling AK Party campaign bus from an election rally by Erdogan in the city of Kastamonu in the Black Sea region. The prime minister had already left Kastamonu by helicopter.
"The attack only targeted police. It was not an attack on civilians or the prime minister," the PKK said in a statement carried on Firat's website. "This attack is a message to the AKP to withdraw its police who suppress Kurdish people."
State-run TRT news channel said eight people had been detained on suspicion of planning another attack. Dogan news agency said six people had been held, all suspected PKK members.
(Reporting by Seda Sezer and Ece Toksabay; Writing by Simon Cameron-Moore; Editing by Michael Roddy)
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